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Thy huntress' name, that full life doth sway.

my

O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books,
And in their barks my thoughts I'll character;
That every eye, which in this forest looks,
Shall see thy virtue witness'd everywhere.
Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree
The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.

Enter CORIN and TOUCHSTONE.

[Exit.

Cor. And how like you this shepherd's life, Master Touchstone?

Touch. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the Court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?

Cor. No more but that I know, the more one sickens, the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night is lack of the

Cynthia, which were doubtless well known to Shakespeare, we have the following highly poetical passage:

Nature's bright eye-sight, and the night's fair soul,

That with thy triple forehead dost control

Earth, seas, and hell.

6 Inexpressible she; the active form with the passive sense. So Milton in his Hymn on the Nativity:

Harping, in loud and solemn quire,

With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir.

Sun; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred. Touch. Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast ever in Court, shepherd?

Cor. No, truly.

Touch. Then thou art damn'd.

Cor. Nay, I hope,

8

Touch. Truly, thou art damn'd; like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.

Cor. For not being at Court? Your reason.

Touch. Why, if thou never wast at Court, thou never saw'st good manners; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous 9 state, shepherd.

Cor. Not a whit, Master Touchstone: those that are good manners at the Court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the Court. You told me you salute not at the Court but you kiss 10 your hands that courtesy would be uncleanly, if courtiers were shepherds.

Touch. Instance, briefly; come, instance.

Cor. Why, we are still handling our ewes ; and their fells,11

you know, are greasy.

7 In Jonson's Sad Shepherd, Lionel says of Amie: "She's sick of the young shepherd that bekist her;" sick for want of him. The usage occurs repeatedly in Shakespeare. See page 42, note 6.

8 Natural being a common term for a fool, Touchstone puns on the word. 9 Parlous is an old form of perilous; sometimes used with a dash of humour, as appears to be the case in this instance.

10 But you kiss here means without kissing. The Poet elsewhere uses but in this way. So in Hamlet, i. 3: "Do not sleep but let me hear from you." Here the meaning clearly is, "Do not sleep without letting me hear from you." See vol. iv., page 82, note 1.

11 Hides or skins; as in Jonson's Discoveries: “A prince is the pastor of the people. He ought to shear, not to flea his sheep; to take their fleeces, not their fells."

Touch. Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say; come.

Cor. Besides, our hands are hard.

Touch. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again. A more sounder 12 instance, come.

Cor. And they are often tarr'd over with the surgery of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands are perfumed with civet.

Touch. Most shallow man! thou worms-meat, in respect of 13 a good piece of flesh, indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: 14 Civet is of a baser birth than tar, — the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.

Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me: I'll rest. Touch. Wilt thou rest damn'd? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee ! 15 thou art raw.

Cor. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is, to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

Touch. That is another simple sin in you; to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether; and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crookedpated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If

12 Comparatives, and superlatives too, were thus doubled by all writers and speakers in Shakespeare's time.

13 In respect of is in comparison with. Often so. See vol. ii., page 102, note 67. Also vol. iv., page 212, note 3.

14 Perpend is consider, or weigh mentally.

15 Alluding, apparently, to the practice of surgeons, who used cuttings and burnings for the healing of a disease called the simples; a quibble being implied withal between simples and simpleton. His being raw is the reason why incision should be made, in Touchstone's logic. Bear in mind that raw is used in the double sense of green and sore, and perhaps this will render the passage clear enough.

thou be'st not damn'd for this, the Devil himself will have no
shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst 'scape.
Cor. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mis-
tress's brother.

Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper.
Ros. From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.

Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lined 16

Are but black to Rosalind.

Let no face be kept in mind

But the face of Rosalind.

Touch. I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted: it is the right butterwoman's rate 17 to market.

Ros. Out, Fool!

Touch. For a taste:

If a hart do lack a hind,

Let him seek out Rosalind.

If the cat will after kind,

So be sure will Rosalind.
Winter garments must be lined,
So must slender Rosalind.

They that reap must sheaf and bind;

Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,

Such a nut is Rosalind.

He that sweetest rose will find,

Must find love's prick and Rosalind.

16 Lined is delineated or drawn.

17 The jog-trot pace of dairy-women going to market is now all out of date, so that we have no chance of witnessing it.

This is the very false gallop 18 of verses: why do you infect yourself with them?

Ros. Peace, you dull Fool! I found them on a tree.
Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.

Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will bear the earliest fruit 19 i' the country; for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar.

Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.

Ros. Peace!

Enter CELIA, reading a paper.

Here comes my sister, reading: stand aside.
Celia. [Reads.] Why should this a desert be?
For 20 it is unpeopled? No;

Tongues I'll hang on every tree,
That shall civil 21 sayings show:
Some, how brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage,
That the stretching of a span
Buckles in his sum of age;

Some, of violated vows

'Twixt the souls of friend and friend:

But upon the fairest boughs,

18 So in Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse, 1593: "I would trot a false gallop through the rest of his ragged verses, but that, if I should retort the rime doggerel aright, I must make my verses (as he doth) run hobbling, like a brewer's cart upon the stones, and observe no measure in their feet."

19 The medlar is one of the latest fruits, being uneatable till the end of November. Moreover, though the latest of fruits to ripen, it is one of the earliest to rot. Does Rosalind mean that when the tree is graffed with Touchstone, its fruit will rot earlier than ever?

20 For was often used where we should use because.

21 Civil is here used in the same sense as when we say, civil wisdom and civil life, in opposition to a solitary state.

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